The percussion family is made up of instruments that are struck with a stick, mallet, hand, brush or other means creating sound. There is usually a surface that is struck and the sound waves often travel through a chamber, tube, or shell to allow the vibration to resonate. Drums are the most recognized of the instruments in this family.
Throughout history the standard drum consisted of a simple hollowed out log or a gourd with a piece of animal skin stretched taunt. Sticks and bones were used as beaters and together they could create a wide variety of tonal colors and contrasts. Different skin tensions also were created to achieve unique sounds and tones.
One of the most dynamic and impactful modern drum developments has been the snare drum. The snare drum is known as an instrument with indefinite pitch. Indeed, the tone of a snare drum is very difficult to change without a tool or drum key. By comparison, other pitched instruments are fairly easy to change with tuning slides, tuning pegs, fine tuners, mouth piece adjustments and so on.
Around the turn of the 20th century, the snare drum's popularity increased with the rise of bugle corps. Metal counter hoops were added to tighten the drumheads more efficiently. The original tabor or gut snare was replaced with a coiled wire snare—the material still used today. Drum head composition also changed and moved to a synthetic skin often made up of Mylar or other plastic based products.
Many major recording studios have used ‘tone control’ types of devices for improving a drum's sound. The true sound of a drum is more apparent when you reduce problem frequencies, unwanted overtones, and ringing. Once these problems are addressed, the resulting tone is noticeably more pleasing to the ear.
Drummers greatly benefit from rapid, convenient, efficient tone control in situations such as live performances or in studio contexts. One type of common tone control is muffling the drum using a device to control ring and unwanted overtone frequencies.
There are dozens of products on the market used for tone control. These products do a decent job of changing or modifying tone, but the current products often change the sound too much, in essence “choking’ the sound out of the drum. Furthermore, the products on the market are not easily removed and re-applied in the middle of a song without devoting a hand to do so. This is very important as both hands of the drummer are busy during a song and removing the stick from the hand makes the drummer prone to mistakes and unwanted tempo changes. Drummers often transfer sticks from their hand to mouth, underarms, or any other method to get a free hand. This can be challenging during a songs since a drummer's arms, legs, hands, wrists, feet, shoulders, and torso are all in motion.
There are a many products currently on the market that attempt to address these issues falling within the following general categories: after market rings (“AMR”), built in rings (“BIR”), adhesive based products, add-on mechanical, built in mechanical muffling devices, and add-on gravity based devices. As explained below, the available products have substantial shortcomings.
For years AMRs were the mainstay in the market. AMRs are shaped like a perfect circle or ring and come in different sizes, thicknesses, and diameters. AMRs are very difficult to get off of your drum in a rush without damaging them or creasing them. For example, a drummer must pinch the ring with her forgers, or poke at it with her stick to remove the ring during a song. Once the ring is removed the drummer must find a place for the ring. Therefore, AMRs fail to promote smooth, quick transitions of the muffling device. They also are difficult to reinstall on the drum head, due to their awkward shape, pliability and size.
BIRs are manufactured into the drum head. Many companies have successfully introduced drum heads that improve the sound over those heads manufactured in the past, by adding another layer or ring of Mylar onto the back side of the head. Other companies have introduced venting and other ring type products to contain over ring into a built-in ring format. Unfortunately, these products do not allow the drummer to change the amount of tone control muffling without removing heads which forces retuning.
Many adhesive products are removable, re-usable and offer great concepts for marketing and commercializing their products. However, the exclusive use of an adhesive device means that the attack of the stick is somewhat compromised and sound is a game of microns, and micro seconds. These adhesive products are also difficult to remove, reapply, reattach, and store while not in use. The amount of time it takes to remove, let alone reapply it, is too long for an easy mid-song transition. When removed they must be stored somewhere and if they fall to the floor they often pick up dust, hair, and other unwanted materials reducing their sticking ability.
Add-on and built-in mechanical devices offer adjustability in the drum's muffled sound as well as some fine tuning. However, quick changes are virtually impossible with most of these products. Most add-on mechanical devices must be removed when the drums are packed and transported.
The add-on gravity based tone control devices utilize gravity to muffle the tone. They are often attached to the hardware of the drum, either on the rim or external hardware such as tension rods or lugs. Some are tethered and others use hook and loop fasteners to attach. The major problem with these devices as well, is the removability and ease of re-application of the products mid-song.
Before the rise of these products drummers employed a variety of creative techniques to control tone. For example, duct tape was used, sometimes in combination with tissue or paper towels. Drummers additionally used towels, clothing, and even certain feminine products to achieve the desired tones out of their drums.
Drummers have also used the common wallet for decades. Many famous drummers have used their wallets in live and/or studio applications to control the over-ring from their drum and the undesirable overtones that accompany that ring. The drummer's wallet is usually placed on the edge of the drum near the rim, sometimes open and hanging over the rim, and sometimes closed and resting against the rim.
The mass of the wallet stops the head from vibrating as intensely after being struck. This action occurs due to the amount of surface area in contact with the drumhead among other physical factors. The wallet still allows for the initial attack to be true and unaffected due to the split second that the wallet spends in mid-air away from the head because of the percussive wave of the initial drum stick stroke. The wallet falls back to the head, thus cancelling out any unwanted reverberations by dampening the head with its mass.
There is a need for a percussion instrument tone control device that ably cancels out unwanted overtones and dissonant ringing in an instrument and yields a great sounding, bright stick attack tone. Further, there is a need for a device that offers convenient and quick attachment, application, removal, and a simplified means of engagement. There is also a need for a device that is versatile and that easily fits most percussion instruments on the market.